Tuesday, 28 February 2017

The trolley problem is
a common illustration used in the study of ethics and morality.I did a search on the “Christian” answer to
the problem, because, of course, that would undoubtedly be the “correct”
answer, and the moral dilemma it posed would be solved (if only life were that
easy).I was left unsatisfied in my
search for the same reason that I failed to write this blog post years ago.

I had wanted to write
a post simplifying complicated questions, and present it in box, neatly tied
with a bow.After all, I believe in a
moral code backed by the absolute authority of God.I didn’t, and still don’t, believe in “grey”
areas.Something is either morally
acceptable, or unacceptable.It couldn’t
be both.

I’ve since come to
realize how impossible it is to simplify the countless individual situations
that come up to an individual answer.The moral code may be absolute, but the situations to which they apply
are vastly different because each person is different than the next with their
own understanding of how to best do good (eg. James 4:17).

For instance, years
ago I heard a discussion on the ethics of providing safe tools for drug addicts
to continue in their addiction.Both
sides wanted to help addicts.One side
said that providing safe tools ensured that the drug addicts were protected
from many of the health risks they were exposed to in their addiction.The other side insisted that providing these
tools enabled the drug addicts to continue.On that information alone, I am not able to make a moral judgement on
which side was right.Both sides are
discussing how to best help the drug addicts.Both sides recognize the importance of the protection of human life.

What’s the point of
speaking up at all, if I don’t know the right answer?It’s because I believe that a right answer
can be reached with each situation, and how we reach that answer is
important.But before I get into that, I
want to first review the trolley problem.

The Trolley Problem

For those who don’t
know the trolley problem, I’ll give you the simplified version.

Suppose there is a
trolley on a crash collision course with a group of five people who are stuck
on its track and unable to move out of its way.The collision would undoubtedly kill the five people.The only way to save these people is to hit a
switch, which would cause the trolley to go down a different track, where a
single person is stuck and would be killed in the process.The question is, should you involve yourself
and flip the switch?

There’s a second part
to the question.Suppose you are on a
bridge over the track that the trolley is on, and there is no switch to send
the trolley away from its path towards the five people.However, next to you on the bridge is a fat
person, and you know for a fact that if you push the fat person onto the track,
that would kill the fat person but be sufficient to stop the trolley.Should you push the fat person onto the track
to save more lives?

It may come as little
surprise to you that the majority of people presented with this question said
that they would flip the switch in response to the first question, but the vast
minority of people said that they would push the fat person in the path of the
trolley in the second question.

(If you want to save
time you may want to at this point scroll ahead to the section of my blog with
the heading “My Answer to the Trolley Problem”)

The Promise

So what’s the “right”
answer?

I posed that question
to one of my friends, and she gave me an unsatisfactory response.She refused to answer, saying that she didn’t
like being restrained to a mere two options when in real life there would
probably be more.As much it failed to
give me a hypothetical answer to my question, her response on a practical level
was completely correct.The majority of
the time when a person is faced with a difficult moral question, there are so
many more factors and responses involved than what the trolley problem poses.

As I tried to tackle
any complex moral conundrum my mind could conceive of, it was easy for me to
set aside a primal fact, a truth that we would all do remember:we will never be put in a situation where we
will be forced to do the wrong thing (the definition of “wrong” being “sinning
against God,” which is objectively the worst offense we can do in any situation).

1 Corinthians 10:13 - No
temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is
faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you
are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

This promise is
repeated.

2 Peter 1:3 - His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life

I know, that’s easier said
than done.It’s one thing to recognize
that God will to provide the answer.It’s another thing completely to do what is necessary to discern what
that answer is.It can be incredibly
hard to know what the right thing to do is.For that reason, I absolutely love Proverbs 3:6…

“in all your ways submit to him, and hewillmakeyourpathsstraight.”

I want you to take the
flipside of that verse into account.That being, “if you ignore God and what he desires for you to do, when
the time comes to make decisions, it will not be very clear to you which
direction to go.

Romans 12:1-2 - Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view
of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing
to God—this is your true and proper worship.Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by
the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s
will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

To me, the greatest
difficulty often doesn’t come with knowing what the right choice would be, but with
being willing to accept the answer once it’s reached.Often the answer of the right thing to do is
so contrary to what is needed for self preservation; the correct moral option
doesn’t seem true because it seems the path of most resistance.

I have gone over how a
Christian should go about navigating “grey” areas, and I have done so by using
the Bible as support.That is because
the Bible, as God’s word, holds absolute authority regarding moral issues.That means that the more a moral issue is
addressed in the Bible, the less “complex” it should be to us.We shouldn’t lean on our own conscious and
convictions and discernment when the answer has already been plainly laid out
to us in the Bible.

I understand that it’s
a common thing for a particular passage of the Bible to be taken completely out
of the context that it was given, and so we need to recognize that although the
Bible has authority, our interpretation of the Bible does not have the same
authority.That means that we should be
willing to acknowledge the limitations of the convictions we have.However, there are enough points in the Bible
that make the character of God and what he wants clear to us that are portrayed
in unambiguous ways that we can use the Bible as a functional reference and not
as merely a loose guideline.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 - All
Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness,so
that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

The reason that the
trolley problem is such a great illustration to explore is because it has the
human life at its epicenter.Most people
recognize the value of human life without being told.The Bible gives reasons why the human life
has inherent value.The reason why I
couldn’t get a satisfactory answer for the trolley problem wasn’t because the
trolley problem was asking “is the human life valuable,” but rather, “what
lengths would you go to preserve human life?”It’s much closer to asking “what constitutes as murder,” than “is it
wrong to kill?”I will not give a
comprehensive answer to the ethics of murder, but I do want to scratch the
surface and go over the things that I can say with confidence.

The Law

I could spend a great
time exploring arguments and counter arguments, but instead I’ll see if I can
cut to the chase and let the scripture speak to us.As a Christian, what exactly are the rules
surrounding us that we need to follow?

After reading that
question, we learn that asking what the rules are is asking the wrong question.

Romans 7:6 - But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from
the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way
of the written code.

I have known for a
long time that much of the laws in the Old Testament were civil laws given to
the ancient civilization of Israel, and aren’t laws that God wants us to follow
today (Colossians 2:16-17).However, I
still held that the ten commandments were absolute rules that I needed to
follow or else I would be sinning against God.For reasons that I could back up with Scripture (and will go over in the
next section), I made myself a clause in the statement that Romans 7:6 made
about us not being bound by the law any longer.However, I was missing the point.

Matthew 22:35-40 - One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the
Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment.And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All
the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

The point of
explaining the spirit of the law wasn’t so that we would have additional laws
to follow, so that we could become like Pharisees and merely check the boxes of
completed tasks.Jesus gives light to
the absurdity of trying to achieve righteousness by following rules when He
gives all sorts of additional “rules” to live righteously in Matthew 5, then
finishes with “Be perfect, therefore,
as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

So if it’s not about
following a bunch of rules, what is it about?How in the world can we hope to achieve “perfection” if we don’t live
driven by following the rules?

Romans
8:1-4 - Therefore, there is now
no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,because through Christ Jesus
the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and
death.For what the law
was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending
his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he
condemned sin in the flesh,in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be
fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the
Spirit.

Okay, so we are
supposed to live according to the Spirit.That does show us that how futile our attempts to follow the law to the
letter on our own accord is.But how
does living by the Spirit different than living by a set of laws?

The difference is not
necessarily what we do differently, but why
we do what we do.Living by the Spirit
recognizes that we are in a relationship with God.Living a righteous life is no longer strictly
about what we do, but about who we are.

Romans 8:14-16 - For those who
are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.The
Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again;
rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by
him we cry, “Abba, Father.”The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that
we are God’s children.

An illustration from
my work place may help shed some light on the situation.At work the boss wants us to work
efficiently.That’s the goal.We often measure the rate at which we get a
specific job done.It can be tempting to
make working quickly the goal, but the speed we work at is only a guideline put
in place to help us reach the goal.

I often supervise
others at my job.When I’m a supervisor,
I carry my bosses’ authority.I need to
follow their rules, but there are often situations that their rules don’t
directly address.I know from spending
time with my bosses and from seeing the rules that are in place what the
correct way to approach new situations are; I get an idea from time spent in
service how my boss would have me handle everything.The more experience at my job I gain, the
more I find myself not responding to the rules, but to the goal of pleasing the
boss.The rules haven’t gone anywhere, I
still follow them.But I’m not
overwhelmed by them.I learn why the
rules are in place not so that I can merely obey the rules, but so that I can
adopt an attitude that correctly propagates the desired effect of the rules.

As I build a
relationship with my employers, I learn of the way that they would have be
behave.The same is true in the
Christian walk.The more we walk with
Christ, the better we will learn how to approach situations the way that He
would want us to.

Dealing with False
Conclusions

Before we get back to
the trolley problem, I want to deal with a conclusion that we would be tempted
to draw from what I went over thus far.We cannot take our freedom in Christ and our understanding of the
reasons he put the law in place and use those as an excuse to disregard the
laws themselves.Here’s what Jesus
Himself has to say about disregarding the matter…

Matthew 5:17-18 - “Do not think
that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish
them but to fulfill them.For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the
smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear
from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Reading that, and
further scriptures, we can see how the fulfillment of the law by Jesus changes
the dynamic by which they apply to us.

Hebrews shows us that
Jesus came into the world as the perfect sacrifice and as the perfect priest, fulfilling
the laws regarding sacrifices and priestly duties.We no longer have to approach God through merely
human priests because we can approach God through Jesus, who is fully man and
fully God and the perfect priest.We no
longer need to rely on the blood of sacrifices to cleans our sins because the
blood of Christ covers all our sins.

The laws given to Israel
as a nation set apart as God’s chosen people have been fulfilled because
through Christ’s work, those who follow Jesus are now his chosen people (1
Peter 2:9; Ephesians 22:11-22).We are
unified not as a physical nation but as a spiritual one.(That is also why the skeptic’s argument that
the Bible commands Christians to put sinners to death according to the Old
Testament rules is not a valid one)

The reason we cannot
treat the ten commandments in the same way as the other laws that Jesus has
fulfilled is because they are so basic and primary that disregarding any of
them would go against not only the law itself, but also the spirit of the law,
which is to love God first and to love others as yourself (as previously shown).

I believe that is the
reason that even though Paul and the other Apostles say we do not need to
follow certain Old Testament rules (like circumcision, eating certain foods,
etc.eg. 1 Corinthians 7:19; Romans
14:20), not once do they say that we are exempt from following the ten
commandments.

We also see
distinctions between the commandments and laws by the very fact that they are
given different words and are used in a way to show that they are two different
things.

Romans 7:12 - So then, the law
is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.

When Paul was showing us
the importance of having the law to show us what sin was, he used the
commandments as an example.

Romans 7:7 - What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not!
Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law.
For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said,
“You shall not covet.”

James, too, tells that
disobeying the commandments is breaking the law.

James 2:11 - For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also
said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit
murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

All of that was a very
long way of saying “yes, the commandments have authority and we still need
to follow the do not murder rule.”I
needed to go through it, however, to know exactly why that was, not just because I was going with an arbitrary gut
feeling brought on by being conditioned to think a certain way. The conclusion I came to about the new dynamic the Sabbath commandment has (see my article About the Sabbath) with the freedom that Jesus bought us also made me wonder if there was a new dynamic to any other commandments.

Not for the Greater
Good

This is related to the
previous section.Once we understand
what God wants, we also become tempted to do things “for the greater good.”In regards to the trolley problem, a person
may say “murder is fine if it is done out of the love for the people on the
track.”

I am not trying to
simplify the trolley problem with this statement, but we cannot let ourselves
say “it’s okay to sin a little in order that we may show love to even more
people.”We cannot say “it’s okay to murder
if by doing so we are saving lives.”

A common exploration
of the question of the moral acceptability for the greater good comes when we
discuss how in cases in history, people lied to the enemy to save lives.

Before I go any
further, I want to remind you I do not claim to have the answer to the hard
questions we are now discussing.That is
why it took me this long to get to this point.I needed to first show that we need to rely on the Spirit for guidance.

I want you to consider
this next verse.

Ephesians 6:12 - For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the
rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

The end goal isn’t a
physical one.The end goal isn’t to have
as much people stay alive for as long as possible.In fact, the more I read the Bible, the more
I get the sense that there is a good chance following Jesus will lead us
through more physical hardship than if we didn’t follow Him.

Romans 8:36 - As
it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

I am very against “the
end justifies the means.”There are two primary
reasons for that:

We do not
have control over what happens next.Yes, it is true that we can make educated and very accurate predictions
of any given action given what we have figured out about the way the universe
works.But we don’t know the future as a
fact, we can only know it is a likelihood.What we do have control over is whether we remain in obedience to God.

God has already shown that He has control over the end.Perhaps in our lifetime we’ll never see the
full reason why He allowed an end to come through a particular means, but we need
to trust that He knows best.

I also want to mention that when we disagree with God about the means to the
end, there is a good chance we are forgetting what the “end” is.It isn’t to bring ourselves glory or to
glory, but to bring glory to God.

Let’s take
“the end justifies the means” to its natural conclusion.If that were a valid argument, then a person
could commit all sorts of evil so long as they were convinced in their own mind
that they were doing it for the greater good.

My Answer to the
Trolley Problem

I do not claim that
this is the “be all and end all” true Christian answer.I do believe, however, that I cannot come too
much closer to an answer that I would be able to state with confidence.

I recognize the degree
of separation of realizing an answer in theory and carrying through a certain
conviction on a practical level.If I
were approached by people wanting me to lie to protect them from their evil
pursuers, I know that regardless of how I respond, it won’t be as simple as me consulting
a pre-calculated conclusion.

In order to answer the
question of the trolley problem, I would have to rely on the Spirit’s guidance,
and carry through what I believe it shows me to be the right answer.When the situation comes, if I see myself as “sinning
by murder in order to save even more people,” I do not think I should carry
through with it.However, there is a
chance that when the situation comes to be, the thought that I would be murdering
someone for a greater good may not even come to mind; there is a good chance
that I would merely have “protecting people in danger” on the forefront of my
mind, enabling me to do what I needed to in order to protect them.

There’s still a
considerable number of things I could say that could add to this topic.However, I believe that I went over enough
that anyone who has made it through this post in its entirety besides me
(bravo, by the way, if you’re real) has been shown the tools that we have to approach
a great deal of tough, moral decisions.

In summary, I would
like to say a few things.

Draw
closer to Christ.The closer you get to
Him, the greater insight you will have in approaching difficult decisions.

Don’t just
do better, but be better.Follow Jesus
and become part of the family of God.

The way
you come closer to God is by talking to Him and listening to His words.All of them.That includes the laws that we may not necessarily need to follow
because their purpose has been fulfilled, as they still give us insight to the character
of God and the things about our behaviour that have significance (Remember
Matthew 5:17-18).

We are
approaching the question the wrong way when we see how close to the line we can
come before we are technically doing anything wrong.

The right way to approach
the question is "how can I best represent God's glory and his desire for
us, His creation?"